I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for performing handoff in a wireless communication network.
II. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may operate on multiple frequency channels in order to improve capacity. A frequency channel may also be referred to as a radio frequency (RF) channel, a CDMA channel, a carrier, etc. The wireless network may distribute access terminals (e.g., cellular phones) among the multiple frequency channels such that the network load can be evenly distributed across the frequency channels. This may result in many access terminals being handed off from one frequency channel to another frequency channel. It is desirable to perform handoff to another frequency channel, if necessary, in an expedient manner.